The Forgotten Socialist—Karl Kautsky

My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and am now a writer who haspublished four books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. Alongwith Frederick Engels, Marx was the founder of modern Communism. But there is one man whowas in his time one of the greatest theoreticians of socialism; Karl Kautsky. Who was Karl Kautsky?He became one of the greatest single leaders of the socialist movement after the death of bothKarl Marx and Frederick Engels. Born in Prague (now the capital of the Czech Republic) onOctober 16, 1854, Kautsky was educated at the University of Vienna. He had personally met withboth Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and had corresponded at great length with both men.When Marx died, Kautsky had met and carried on a long correspondence with Engels until Engels’ death in 1895. Kautsky was a leader in the Social Democratic Party of Germany and served inthe German parliament the Reichstag going into World War I. Far from supporting the Communistrevolution in Russia in 1917, Kautsky condemned it as a betrayal of socialism and a completeperversion of Karl Marx’s ideas. Kautsky believed that socialism had to peacefully take over fromthe ruins of capitalism and thus found a new workers’ state. He saw the Russian Communistsunder Lenin as a new form of dictatorship and a threat to the workers. But the world had changed,and Karl Kautsky, who had known personally Marx and Engels, was now living in a different andfar more violent world that wanted radical change. For what was left of his life, Kautsky spent theremainder of years in exile in Austria and then in the Netherlands. He died on October 17, 1938,at age 84—a completely forgotten man. None of his books or works can be found, his writingsare not reprinted, and hardly any mention is made of Karl Kautsky.